Thoughts

Geek Credit: +1

It often pays in small ways to be the geeky sort and to be teaching college-age students who are voracious consumers of the media.

One of my classes today had to form their groups for this term’s assignments and gave me group names that were just… Numbers. “One.” “Two.” “Three.” Until six. Disappointed by the lack of imagination, I said, “What?? Fine. I’ll name the groups.”

The end result was this:

“I’ll name your groups based on Game of Thrones houses.”

Now, I’m not a huuuge fan of Game of Thrones. (I watched the first season and thought it was waaay too violent and graphic for my taste. Then I watched parts of season 4. And read parts of the most recent two books. I read/watch only parts of it because I don’t like many of the characters and the books are mainly told from the POV of various characters, half of whom I don’t care for. So I read/watch the parts I’m interested in and then to fill in the gaps… I go to the Wiki site. hah!) My first instinct was to name the groups Rogers, Stark, Romanoff, Banner, Barton and Odinson (because the Avengers are fun and there are 6 of them which makes the number just right for 6 groups). But I thought it would be overkill (because my laptop’s wallpaper has Cap’s shield on it) and it would perhaps be more interesting to use Game of Thrones for a change. (The coats-of-arms above I got from the Wiki site.)

So I picked the noble house names that sounded nicest. I almost used Stark instead of Greyjoy but then as the Stark family appears to be pretty much the main focus of the books, I thought it might be a bit unfair. So out went Stark, in came Greyjoy.

The GoT theme appealed to quite a few students, one of whom (who had been in my illustration class last term) proceeded to eagerly ask me if I was a fan, and if I’d watched Oberyn’s fight against the Mountain. Another one posted the following remark on Facebook: